Hexplore is a roleplaying adventure questing game series, where you are taking on an evil adversary intent on destroying your realm. The game centres around your hero party embarking on a questing journey across an expanding map, gathering items such as equipment, talismans or relic fragments, and improving their skills. There are now 4 core versions of the game, each with a different setting – Valley of the Dead King (valley/undead), Forests of Adrimon (forests/nature), Sands of Shurak (sands/desert) and Domain of Mirza (dark realm/vampire).
Taking Adrimon as an example, the sorceress is enslaving the forest dwellers, and players will be able to gain favours from the forest spirits, sneak into the cities, move though the fey-realm and interact with the Dryad, a powerful ally, and battle tough foes or release creatures from the Magi’s control to become allies. It is very roleplay centric in that you have basic skills to move, search for treasure and survive in the forests, alongside combat abilities of attack and defence, and two clever mastery skills which is where the characters become unique to their role. The main part of the game involves you gaining experience and upgrading your skills board using a mark and wipe process, which works really well.
This game feels freeform in its exploration choices, the game map will have quest destinations to visit where you will face challenges to progress your story. The main enemy has its own count down progression which encourages you to keep moving and developing before the eventual showdown, and as you become stronger, then progressively harder boss monsters will emerge. In the early game you will mainly undertake small challenge quests, however as you increase in strength you tend to move into hunting down boss creatures.
The game is not overly complex, although there is a learning curve to know what you can do in city, shrines or ruins, and there are helpful component boards to refer to. You will likely always need to look up certain conditions, skills and new equipment regularly. As a solo or two player game, it is a great journey of discovery, and as you play you will progress your characters storyline and increase their skills. The writing on event and quest cards provides extra theme, and there is a nice story book too which adds background to certain events and enemies.
The full game is a long one, often over 3 hours to get to the final showdown, although there are quicker variants, however the enjoyment is in the journey. I have it enjoyable setting myself a quicker objective to defeat a lower boss providing a shorter game to play, and I would have liked developers to have added more bite sized objective scenarios for each box.
The artwork and components are improving over time, and a new encounter deck now features graphic cards, and the thick card boss monsters with their unique abilities are excellent. Most of the content of each box is usable across the other games, and the wipe-able hero boards are nice to use and become an addictive element as you chase your next stat upgrade through the game encounters.
These games continue to add new card packs and themes, and the new hardback campaign books are one of best additions with an alternative way of playing, becoming for me the best implementation of a dungeons and dragons style board game playable without a dungeon master, and the real joy of the game is the character development and adventure story you are telling
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Expansions
There are many different ways to expand this game once you have a core set (my additions highlighted green = own, blue = part owned, red = not purchased) :
Core Sets
There are four main editions of this game available, the original Valley of the Dead King, then Forests of Adrimon, Sands of Shurax and the newest Domain of Mirza Noctis all being similar in concept and mechanics but have different themes and storyline weaved throughout the game. They also have different sets of heroes and powers, which are interchangeable between the sets. The most obvious way to expand is to get another core game version with a theme you like, as this is likely to give you the most new content for your money, as you get a lot of new material in each box.
Return To Expansions
Each of the core editions has one main box expansion which adds to the base game and retains the same set theme, and these are known as the ‘return to’ editions. If you really like the edition you own and want more similar content then this may be a better and slightly cheaper option than buying another core set. You will get a little more of everything, extra heroes, traits, races, enemies including a new way to play competitively as the boss enemy. These expansions also include some dual ability heroes which can make solo play a little easier by using just one character. I personally own these expansions for the first two core sets and would recommend them if you like the set theme.
Living Cards
These are pretty straightforward new card decks that add new encounters and perils to your game, replicating what was also provided as online extras. There is one pack available for each core set version and this is a cheap way to add variety to your quests. However, I would buy other expansions over these.
Encounter Decks
These are card decks for the first 3 game volumes, reprinting all the encounters complete with great artwork, and have ways to increase the encounter difficulty level. This is one of the best additions to the game as they add more visual immersion to the encounters. I own all of these decks.
Campaign Story Books
One of the newest and most interesting developments is the hardback campaign books being written which allow you to play a storyline game using all the components and maps, but reading story text and making branching decisions as you go. This is a different way to play compared to the original villain scenario, and the initial book Klik’s Madness is available for Valley of the Dead King, with Fall Of The Ancients coming in 2024 for Adrimon. These are high quality with great artwork and new storyline, enemies, non player characters, and is like owning a D&D roleplay book. Overall if you like an interesting scripted storyline, this has my highest recommendation to improve the value of your game experience.